HOME Cuba Update for May 2008
Tom Whitney, May 6, 2008
Friends of Luis Posada Carriles held a banquet May 2 at the Big Five Club in West Miami-Dade in honor of the 80-year old Cuban exile. Pedro Peñaranda, president of Municipalities of Cuba in Exile, the group organizing the event, told the Miami Herald that supporters wanted to "recognize Posada as a great Cuban, a man of dignity and decency and as a great patriot." While a band played, a "beaming" Posada circulated among the tables greeting acquaintances, many of them fellow combatants at the Bay of Pigs, members of the so-called Brigade 2506. Well over 500 guests were on hand, including Ernesto Diaz, leader of the paramilitary Alpha 66 organization.
Posada is no stranger to the Big Five. Its lobby last year became a gallery for display and sale of 30 Posada paintings. In the early 1970s, Posada ran Venezuela's intelligence service as a torture shop. He helped direct a worldwide campaign of anti-Cuban sabotage and slaughter. He engineered a 1976 bomb attack on a Cuban Airliner killing 73 passengers. He supplied arms to "contra" rebels in Nicaragua under CIA auspices. He organized bombings of Havana hotels in 1997. One explosion killed an Italian tourist. Posada staged an assassination attempt against Cuban President Fidel Castro in 2000. He was honored for these "contributions."
Luis Posada, having entered the United States in 2005, was released pre-trial from jail on May 8, 2007 by federal judge Kathleen Cardone, who rejected a prosecutors' case charging him with lying to immigration officials. Since then Posada had been spotted in public only rarely in Miami prior to the Big Five gala.
Venezuela has sought Posada's extradition in order to finish with court proceedings related to the airliner bombing. Asked to comment on the event honoring Posada, Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuelan ambassador in Washington, said the United States "instead of complying with its treaty obligations, has provided protection for him ... It is once again a demonstration of the double standard on terrorism issues."
For over two years, a New Jersey grand jury has been exploring an indictment against Posada for taking Cuban exile money to pay for the hotel bombing attacks.
Tom Whitney, May 2, 2008
Celebrations of International Workers Day throughout Latin America testified to working class determination, especially in Cuba where millions marched. Honoring workers' struggles and achievements, many observances centered on specific national challenges.
In Caracas, over 300,000 workers and families gathered to applaud labor unity, steel nationalization and a 30 percent minimum wage hike announced that day. In Colombian cities, tens of thousands demonstrated against killings of unionists and against the U.S. free trade pact with Colombia. In Mexico workers marched in support of collective bargaining and against oil privatization, while in Paraguay demonstrations centered on worker unemployment approaching 50 percent.
In Havana, Salvador Valdes, secretary general of the Cuban Workers Federation, addressed 500,000 Cubans gathered in the Plaza of the Revolution. He echoed themes explored two days earlier by President Raul Castro before the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party. Evidently the two, both relatively new in their jobs, are as one in advocating the necessity of melding socialist ideals with resourcefulness in dealing with a host of pressing issues.
Valdes cited our "own dissatisfactions" as stimuli for change, stressing equitable distribution of benefits and rational use of energy, raw materials and financial resources. He called for discipline and organization under Communist Party leadership while condemning "violations of the established order" and criminal and corrupt behaviors directed against "the ethical and moral integrity of our collective labors."
"It is fundamental," he declared, "to concentrate efforts in building production, above all of food," and in the process reduce Cuba's dependency on imported goods. Like President Castro, Valdes alluded to dangers poised over all humanity, specifically climate change, rising food and fuel prices, and wars over resources.
Castro described food production as "a matter of national security" and emphasized that "the greater the difficulties, the more order and discipline are required, and for that, it is vitally necessary to reinforce the country's institutions." He announced that the 6th Congress of the Cuban Communist Party would be held in late 2009 and said pending death sentences will be commuted.
Castro led the Workers Day celebration, but did not speak. Over ten thousand students were at the head of the parade entering the Plaza. Almost 1,500 delegates from 61 countries and 175 organizations throughout the world joined with Cubans in observing the day.